"The Story of Eashoa Msheekha" by Victor Alexander: Fighting the World . . . FOR the World

Ah ha, ah ha! Victor Alexander (v-a.com/bible) is having another fund raising campaign for his movie proposal, Story of Eashoa Msheekha (https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/story-of-eashoa-msheekha#/story). I encourage my readers--both of you--to please support him if you can.

I asked Mr. Alexander what he would hold in his hands if the movie were ALREADY completed. He said, "When I have made the movie STORY OF EASHOA MSHEEKHA, I will have a copy of the movie in my library of films. It might be a 35mm copy or a series of hard drives that are backed up with a few copies and placed in different locations to protect against erasure." If nothing else, we might imagine his copy of "Story of Eashoa Msheekha" already on the shelf in his library of films and hear him saying, "Thank you," for the good contract he holds in his hands to distribute the film. The movie is made.

Why do I support Victor Alexander's translation from the Aramaic? I read his web site (much of which has been taken down, sadly) years ago when I first discovered the Aramaic language primacy. That is, the language of first century Palestine was Aramaic, and the New Testament was first lived, spoken and written in Aramaic. I wanted the most accurate and authentic version I could buy, so I looked into the various Aramaic Bibles available. Some exegetes, like Herb Jahn, didn't speak the language they translated (God bless him, I bought his books anyway). Others translated Aramaic versions that had been translated into Aramaic from Greek by KJV Western missionaries in previous centuries! No wonder there is such close harmony between them! I read their boasts on Amazon.com: "Translated from the first century language that Jesus and the Apostles spoke." Yes, the first century LANGUAGE, but a nineteenth century translation into it!

Those Western-Eastern versions that "read just like the KJV" made me suspicious. I learned from Ethelbert Bullinger's Companion Bible that the priests and Sopherim had made hundreds of changes to the Masoretic text (see the Companion Bible on line, appendixes 30-34). Wouldn't a genuinely ancient version be significantly different if it were from an era previous to those changes? Bingo! Victor Alexander's version "don't read nuthin' like the King James." He is translating copies that predate centuries of changes.

Alexander is a native Aramaic speaker who has studied the ancient ancient Aramaic language (that wasn't a mistake) and cuneiform writings of ancient Mesopotamia. He is pretty good at English, too. This may sound weird as a compliment, but Alexander's translations are wonderfully imperfect. He isn't a corporation or foundation with scholarly contributors and a board of degreed editors, he is a Christian film maker who has studied ancient Aramaic and can translate it pretty well. What you read in his translations is Victor Alexander trying to save the world as a service to God.

Victor, if you read his website, is fighting a war. It is like the battle fought by Athanasius to preserve the truth of the Scriptures (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athanasius_of_Alexandria). When told that the world was against him, Athanasius said, "It is not the world against Athanasius, but Athanasius against the world!" Yet it was for the world that Athanasius fought and suffered repeated exiles. The church eventually accepted Athanasius as its savior against Arianism, but then adopted Arian theology without recognizing it--three separate God-persons who hold different offices but are "one" in agreement, not one God alone.

Alexander has a higher view. The Aramaic words for Jesus, God and Lord have theological values unlike their English counterparts, and Alexander is reluctant to use the misleading English terms. The Aramaic terms, Eashoa, Milta, Allaha, and Maryah are odd and stilting to read at first, but they are as important to use instead of the English as Victor thinks they are. The English designators separate God. The Aramaic unify Him: God is ONE! No element is not the whole. Alexander takes his cue from the ancient pictograph for God--Asshur. Asshur is the powerful warrior/worker who rises from the sun disc radiating flames of glory in the oneness of God. ONE God is EVERYTHING--It is altogether one God.

I have to stop myself from getting shrill here. One thing I did not learn in seminary is the metaphysics I now hold regarding the oneness of God. One thing I DID learn was how to read critically, and I see now how absolutely correct Alexander is in defending the primacy of the ancient Aramaic version of the Bible he uses and the terms for God it uses.

So now Mr. Alexander wants to make a movie about this Jesus, Eashoa Msheekha. I asked him, "Why would you want to make yet another movie about Jesus? There must be hundreds of them that have been made." But "No," he says, "the 'Jesus' of all the movies that have been made in history is not the Eashoa Msheekha of the authentic ancient Aramaic scriptures! The Western church has not heard of Him since those days!"

I do not know how Alexander would present his vision of Eashoa, but I would like to find out. I would like to see his movie made. I want to hear Christ on the cross saying per the ancient Aramaic, "This is my destiny!" (I believe the pericope is a type of our becoming ignoranced humans until we should ascend to the perfection of God--our destiny!)

I do not receive any commission, gifts or benefit from Alexander other than getting to purchase his translations. Make a contribution to his Indiegogo campaign, if you would, or order his translations from his web site, v-a.com/bible. For myself, I already have his Aramaic New Testament in paperback, but I am looking real seriously at that hardbound copy. I have yet to get his version of Exodus in book form, too. He calls it Liberation. They are relatively expensive, but I think well worth it. We might as well read the truth if we want to learn the truth.

If you are a lot richer than I am, please consider financing Story of Eashoa Msheekha, the Jesus the Church doesn't know. Suddenly, I can't think of anything more important than that the church should find out who the real Jesus Christ is.

This is Mr. Alexander's marketing spiel for the Aramaic New Testament:

In 1976 I made a documentary about the antiquities of Mesopotamia. When I was filming in the Louvre Museum and the British Museum, I discovered the truth about where all the legends of the Bible had come from. I discovered what I later was able to identify as the symbol of the Trinity. It took me many years to come to the realization that the original language of the Scriptures was not Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek; the language of the Scriptures was the first language ever recorded in history. It is called by the oldest Church in existence, "Leshana Atiqah," or the Ancient Tongue. The original language of the Bible evolved from drawings, symbols and finally the alphabet. It is, therefore, necessary to go back to the roots of all the words from the beginning of recorded history to understand the Scriptures accurately. This is not simple, but it helps that a translator should be a native speaker of the original language (in its modern vernacular.) Even though the ancient language of the Scriptures is based on thousands of years of development, it helps to be able to pronounce the language correctly. This is where my translation has produced the best version of the New Testament, and of the Old Testament, as I continue to translate the Old Testament Books. In the footnotes to my translation I provide the literal Aramaic idioms, expressions, figures of speech or grammatical constructions. The actual text of my translation is normally of the idiomatic translation. Whenever there is an idiom, I follow up with a footnote to provide the literal wording. However, sometimes the original idiom in the Old Tongue (Ancient Aramaic) is clear enough, and in such cases I note in the footnotes that the "idiom is retained." Then I give the idiomatic translation of the word or phrase in English. Another peculiarity of my translation is that it seems archaic to some people. This cannot be helped. It is not that I'm deficient in my English, but rather I have chosen to render the English language translation as close to the original text as possible (leaving out no words whatsoever) -- this being the first accurate translation of the Scriptures ever. I do not leave out anything of the original Text or smooth over anything; it is all there, word for word, both in the literal and the idiomatic wordings. My literal footnotes are, therefore, usually ungrammatical, but that is deliberate. The main body of my translated Text is idiomatic, but not idiomatic at the cost of altering the meaning. I opted to leave some of the Aramaic flavor intact and maintain the wording of those expressions and phrases that did not have an equivalent English language stylistic substitute. The manuscripts from which I translate are from the Ancient Church of the East, one of the first Churches that emerged out of Jerusalem during the Apostolic Age, in the First Century of Christianity. I'm a descendant of the families that followed in the footsteps of the Apostles of Eashoa Msheekhah (Jesus the Messiah.)